This game recently went coop, and my wife said to me, "Hey, let's play this." Now, I love this woman dearly, I'd do anything for her. I'd throw myself into a woodchipper for this woman. I spend my days being the manliest man alive, speaking only in grunts and flexed biceps and my only emotion is vexation.

And you know what? I had a great time with this game on its own terms.

You ever played Stardew Valley? If you haven't, just skip down a paragraph or so, this won't mean much. If you have, though, this game is so exactly Stardew Valley that if I tried to tell how exactly it is, this review would be really, pointlessly long.

Instead, there's some differences: it feels a little more like a real place, with a southeast Asian sort of vibe. Obviously, 3D art assets, polygons instead of pixels. The characters are more... generally credible, represent a far wider range of human personalities. There's also some "diving" but it's really scooting around on a different map with a different costume on. Oh yeah, and instead of Jojo Mart it's an oil drilling company called Pufferfish, and they seem more longterm-schemingly evil than just offbrand Walmart.

Now, if you don't know what Stardew Valley is, I'll try to make it brief: You have the only farm in an isolated community, and the farm is greatly rundown. Starting with very poor tools, you steadily reclaim the farmland, farming crops to earn a profit, and any spare time you have is spent in side activities, such as mining or fishing, or roaming about the village where the rest of the NPCs live and chatting them up. In time, you might court one. Advancing the game's plot requires engaging with the various distractions (like mining, the museum, etc.) and the progress of the game is pretty slow.

Meaningful actions cost energy, so you have a finite number of actions to do in a day and a limited number of hours as well, so budgeting your energy is the "challenge", and I use that term quite loosely. Since the game has seasons, and your chief moneymaker is farming, scheduling quality farm time each day is really the main goal if you want your character to stop being be a pauper.

Playing it cooperatively means the ol' divide-and-conquer approach works. My wife likes the farming part, so I tend to leave that to her. Meanwhile, I tend to spend a fair bit of time "sanitizing" the mines, which also involves smashing monsters and rocks in equal measure, and I get to let off a bicep flex or a manly grunt in the process. The combat in the game is not at all difficult nor remotely challenging; you can take quite a lot of hits and a night's rest heals all your wounds, so gamers looking for a combat challenge won't find it here. Really, the monsters are a minor inconvenience between you and some quality ore.

The chief goal of the mining is to get metals, which can be used to upgrade tools, which largely means the farm can be made to run more efficiently. Kind of a win/win, even by not farming, you can help the farm.

Really, the game is one of those "cozy" things you've heard so much about of late. Nothing is really a threat. You can build up and decorate your house, adopt a cat, woo one the villagers (or your coop partner), have kids, raise a family, develop an orchard or ranch or your own wines... or all of that at the same time. The villagers are all generally affable, and even the few stern ones can be won over easily enough.

I was indirectly asked if you could play this as a vegan. Now, I suppose technically you could, but it would be really difficult. The museum requires fish and bugs to display, a... second collector (let's just leave it at that) also requires this and more, so if your moral code prevents you from playing a fishing minigame or netting bugs, you could hope to randomly find them under rocks in the mine or in trash bins, but... well, it would be agonizingly slow progress. Or you could turn a blind eye to the depredations of your coop partner, supposing you find one that doesn't mind doing all that.

That said, you don't even have to eat at all, let alone meat products, so if that matters the game definitely has you covered. A breatharian lifestyle is actually viable.

So, to kind of wrap up this ramble, I, macho as I am, have had a perfectly fine time. Playing it with my wife makes it much more enjoyable, as I'm not completely sure I'd want to run the farm myself. But it's kind of fun helping her make this thing take shape, seeing it get better, and the community around us start to get a bit of a glowup as a result of her efforts. There's a few bugs here and there, but I have confidence (judging by developer posts) that they'll be dealt with in the fullness of time.

If you made it down here, you're my kind of people, you really are. I do some streaming from time to time, that's at http://www.twitch.tv/fdejeuner. I'm notoriously chatty, so you can say hi if you want. There's a link to that, and my curator group, on my profile.

This game recently went coop, and my wife said to me, "Hey, let's play this." Now, I love this woman dearly, I'd do anything for her. I'd throw myself into a woodchipper for this woman. I spend my days being the manliest man alive, speaking only in grunts and flexed biceps and my only emotion is vexation. And you know what? I had a great time with this game on its own terms. You ever played Stardew Valley? If you haven't, just skip down a paragraph or so, this won't mean much. If you have, though, this game is so exactly Stardew Valley that if I tried to tell how exactly it is, this review would be really, pointlessly long. Instead, there's some differences: it feels a little more like a real place, with a southeast Asian sort of vibe. Obviously, 3D art assets, polygons instead of pixels. The characters are more... generally credible, represent a far wider range of human personalities. There's also some "diving" but it's really scooting around on a different map with a different costume on. Oh yeah, and instead of Jojo Mart it's an oil drilling company called Pufferfish, and they seem more longterm-schemingly evil than just offbrand Walmart. Now, if you don't know what Stardew Valley is, I'll try to make it brief: You have the only farm in an isolated community, and the farm is greatly rundown. Starting with very poor tools, you steadily reclaim the farmland, farming crops to earn a profit, and any spare time you have is spent in side activities, such as mining or fishing, or roaming about the village where the rest of the NPCs live and chatting them up. In time, you might court one. Advancing the game's plot requires engaging with the various distractions (like mining, the museum, etc.) and the progress of the game is pretty slow. Meaningful actions cost energy, so you have a finite number of actions to do in a day and a limited number of hours as well, so budgeting your energy is the "challenge", and I use that term quite loosely. Since the game has seasons, and your chief moneymaker is farming, scheduling quality farm time each day is really the main goal if you want your character to stop being be a pauper. Playing it cooperatively means the ol' divide-and-conquer approach works. My wife likes the farming part, so I tend to leave that to her. Meanwhile, I tend to spend a fair bit of time "sanitizing" the mines, which also involves smashing monsters and rocks in equal measure, and I get to let off a bicep flex or a manly grunt in the process. The combat in the game is not at all difficult nor remotely challenging; you can take quite a lot of hits and a night's rest heals all your wounds, so gamers looking for a combat challenge won't find it here. Really, the monsters are a minor inconvenience between you and some quality ore. The chief goal of the mining is to get metals, which can be used to upgrade tools, which largely means the farm can be made to run more efficiently. Kind of a win/win, even by not farming, you can help the farm. Really, the game is one of those "cozy" things you've heard so much about of late. Nothing is really a threat. You can build up and decorate your house, adopt a cat, woo one the villagers (or your coop partner), have kids, raise a family, develop an orchard or ranch or your own wines... or all of that at the same time. The villagers are all generally affable, and even the few stern ones can be won over easily enough. I was indirectly asked if you could play this as a vegan. Now, I suppose technically you could, but it would be really difficult. The museum requires fish and bugs to display, a... second collector (let's just leave it at that) also requires this and more, so if your moral code prevents you from playing a fishing minigame or netting bugs, you could hope to randomly find them under rocks in the mine or in trash bins, but... well, it would be agonizingly slow progress. Or you could turn a blind eye to the depredations of your coop partner, supposing you find one that doesn't mind doing all that. That said, you don't even have to eat at all, let alone meat products, so if that matters the game definitely has you covered. A breatharian lifestyle is actually viable. So, to kind of wrap up this ramble, I, macho as I am, have had a perfectly fine time. Playing it with my wife makes it much more enjoyable, as I'm not completely sure I'd want to run the farm myself. But it's kind of fun helping her make this thing take shape, seeing it get better, and the community around us start to get a bit of a glowup as a result of her efforts. There's a few bugs here and there, but I have confidence (judging by developer posts) that they'll be dealt with in the fullness of time. If you made it down here, you're my kind of people, you really are. I do some streaming from time to time, that's at http://www.twitch.tv/fdejeuner. I'm notoriously chatty, so you can say hi if you want. There's a link to that, and my curator group, on my profile.